Colin Bloomfield builds a budget "experimental" PC
Colin is a retired boatbuilder with a 20-year adiction tocomputers.After travelling across Australia in a camper van for six months, he arrived in Cairns Far North Queensland and decided to stayfor a while. Colin was using a laptop during his travels around Australia, but back home he needed something more powerful. He says of his creation: "I intended to use this as an experimental machine. I wanted to try various Linux and Windows OSes and do overclocking. I also wanted to be able to record and edit TV later."
He says the consideration affecting his choices were:
- Cost - "Being on a fixed retirement pension this was a prime consideration. Checked E bay and Online Shops for best prices."
- Cooling - "Located in the tropics min temperatures are around 24 C."
- Ability to change OS " A Removable HDD / Multi Boot / Virtual machine."
- Ability to Over-clock.
- Speed.
CORE SYSTEM
CPU: Intel E8500 Core 2 Duo Processor - $214 Fast but well priced CPU. Capable of overclocking, but still fast enough if left unclocked.
COOLING: EP-K935 LGA775 CPU Silent Cooler with heaksink and fan - $15CPU has a stock cooler, but this was changed for the bigger heat-sink and fan to aid cooling.
MOTHERBOARD: ASUS P5 QL SE MOTHERBOARD SOC 775 - $76Motherboard was found on eBay as new for about half the price at online shops. Capable of overclocking to 1600 FSB. Over-clocking can be left to ASUS's overclocking by percentages or be set manually.
GRAPHICS: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 512Mb - $114 Found as a Used Item on eBay. This also had its own cooling fan and appeared a good buy compared to new prices.After checking Nvidia web site, this model proved to cabable of handling all my present and future needs. Requiring its own power supply and cooling fan. This would take some load off the CPU.
RAM: CORSAIR DOMINATOR GT 4GB2x 2GB 1066MHZ DDR2/Airflow fan - $159Again found NEW on eBay. This was considerably cheaper than other online prices. It was a bargain as the cooling fan was also included, making it another plus towards keeping a cool running system. I believe 4GB to be a minimum requirement nowdays and would also be useful if I decided to try 64-bit OS later.
AUDIO - $0Using a USB set of speaker from my laptop. Will update as funds remit.
HARD DRIVE 1: Basic Samsung SATA 500 GB - $70*
I brought this with me from Perth. It has three partitions. The last partition contains my files downloads etc. from my old computer.
HARD DRIVE 2: Basic Samsung SATA 320 Gb - $70*
Also brought with me from Perth and was used as a backup. I will re format this drive to use to install Operating system (s).
OPTICAL DRIVE: Liteon LTR-48126S CD RW - $50*
Free with case ( see case comments). Would have preferred a DVD but it was free and I can always update later.
PSU: Big Ant 750W 14cm fan - $89 The case had a 300 watt PSU but with the 4 + cooling fans, 2 HDDs, graphics card and overclocking, a larger unit would be necessary. I bought this 750 watt unit included with the other items from Austin Computers so was to get free postage.
CASE: Half Tower- $ n/a Given to me for free. A non working computer still had motherboard, CPU, HDD with Windows, 2 optical drives, PSU but no RAM. I stripped and cleaned it and used whatever I could from internals.
[*Note, no price supplied so we've included an average market price]
Total system cost: $857
EXTRAS
MONITOR: BenQ G2220HD Glossy Black LCD, 21.5" - $158.00 Could have used a second hand CRT at minimum cost, but I splashed out a bit here as I have been used to a reasonably large flat screens and after using a 15in laptop I found it hard to accept at anything else.
KEYBOARD/MOUSE: Logitech XP90 Combo - $29A wireless keyboard and mouse for $29. Only at Officeworks. Why spend more?
TV TUNER: Leadtek PxDTV2300H - $89 Not immediately necessary but at a special price and free postage I could not resist it. Has not yet been installed. Still playing with OSes and no nearby TV aerial.
OPERATING SYSTEM: Ubuntu - $0I will also download other Linux based systems to try out. I chose this OS because it's free. Will trial this as well. Ongoing experimenting. I can fall back on the laptop when the new desktop is not up and running and internet connected."